Re: Recursive Arrays 101 - Mailing list pgsql-general

It's also interesting that some entities (e.g. EOL) are now using something called Life Science ID's (or something like that) in lieu of traditional scientific names. It sounds like a cool idea, but some of the LSID's seem awfully big and complex to me. I haven't figured out exactly what the codes mean.

Then again, when I navigate to the Encyclopedia of Life's aardvark page @ http://www.eol.org/pages/327830/overview the code is actually amazingly short.

On Sun, Oct 25, 2015 at 9:04 PM, David Blomstrom <david.blomstrom@gmail.com> wrote:

What was amazed me is the HUGE tables (as in too big to work with or publish online) that, as near as I can remember, have rows like this...

panthera-leo (lion) | Panthera | Felidae | Carnivora | Mammalia | Chordata | Animalia

cramming virtually the entire hierarchy into every single row. Some of my tables have extra columns listing every species family and order, which most people would consider sloppy. But that's tame compared to how they do it.

I've never been able to make their downloads work on my Mac laptop, and the PHP is too complex for me to figure out. Nor have they ever replied to my e-mails. But the websites using their scheme include the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL).

I'm focusing on creating a polished database focusing on vertebrates, along with select invertebrates and plants. After I get that squared away, I'd like to try adding the Catalogue of Life's entire database. The Encyclopedia of Life and WIkipedia are both enormous projects, but there are some amazing gaps in both projects that I hope to fill.

On Sun, Oct 25, 2015 at 8:51 PM, Adrian Klaver <adrian.klaver@aklaver.com> wrote:

On 10/25/2015 06:10 PM, David Blomstrom wrote:

@ Adrian Klaver: Oh, so you're suggesting I make separate tables for
kingdoms, classes and on down to species. I'll research foreign keys and
see what I can come up with. I hope I can make separate tables for
mammal species, bird species, fish species, etc. There are just so many
species - especially fish - the spreadsheets I use to organize them are
just about maxed out as it is.

If you go here:

http://www.catalogueoflife.org/col/browse/classification?71dd35ed0e10acf939d0123cdbf9ce57

that is how you can drill down to a species in the CoL.

It just seems to follow what is already there. No doubt, there are a lot of species. What is probably more important is that the relationships have changed over time and can be expected to change more, as genetic testing for the purpose of taxonomic classification becomes more prevalent.

I've been using the Catalogue of Life as a guide, but I'm limited
because I can never get their downloads to work. So all I can do is go
to their website and copy a bunch of genera and species at a time.

Well I downloaded the 2015 snapshot and it turns out it is MySQL specific. Recently upgraded this computer, will have to see if MySQL/Mariadb survived the process before I can go any further. It would be interesting to see how they tackled the relationships.

However, I did open up some of the tables I downloaded and was amazed at
how apparently amateurish they are. Yet their site works just fine and
is fast enough.

@ Alban Hertroys: What does EOL mean? It reminds me of Encyclopedia of
Life, which is doing what I was attempting to do years ago.

--
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@aklaver.com

--

David Blomstrom
Writer & Web Designer (Mac, M$ & Linux)
www.geobop.org

--

David Blomstrom
Writer & Web Designer (Mac, M$ & Linux)
www.geobop.org